1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to, for example, an apparatus that includes a display device having a relatively large display screen and can display various images, such as a digital still camera, and a method and a program used for the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital still cameras that record shot images on a recording medium as digital data are in widespread use. With recent reductions in the size and increases in the capacity of built-in flash memories or removable memories used in digital still cameras, it is now possible to accumulate a large amount of image data in these memories.
As a digital still camera is used over years, the number of shot and accumulated images increases. Not infrequently, too many pieces of image data that can be managed in the user's head are stored in a built-in flash memory or a removable memory.
To find a target image from among a large number of images accumulated on a recording medium as mentioned above, typically, accumulated images are played back one by one and displayed on the display screen to be checked.
That is, in the case of a digital still camera according to the related art, typically, upon entering image playback mode, the digital still camera transitions to a state in which, for example, an image selected by the user from among images recorded on the recording medium is displayed across the entire display image.
To view an image following or preceding the currently displayed image, for example, a hardware key such as a cross key is operated to forward or reverse the display image one by one. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to operate the hardware key many times until a target image is displayed.
Some image display apparatuses that display an image allow the display image to be forwarded/reversed by performing a flick operation in an arbitrary direction by using a finger or the like, on a touch panel provided on the display screen.
The operation of forwarding/reversing the display image on the touch panel is an intuitive operation for the user, and is easy to understand and excellent in terms of operability. However, such an operation of forwarding or reversing the display image on the touch panel is the same as the operation using a hardware key in that it is necessary to perform the operation on the touch panel a plurality of times until a target image is displayed.
Accordingly, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-033695 discloses a technique in which the amount of scrolling is calculated from the distance of a so-called drag operation (distance between the start point of a drag operation and a reference point), and an image is scrolled on the basis of this calculated amount of scrolling.
With the technique according to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-033695, the user can scroll the display image by an appropriate amount by a single drag operation, thereby enabling quick retrieval of a target image.